Inflationary Constraints on Type IIA String Theory

By M. Hertzberg, S. Kachru, Washington Taylor, Max Tegmark. 2007

269 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We prove that inflation is forbidden in the most well understood class of semi-realistic type IIA string compactifications: Calabi-Yau compactifications with only standard NS-NS 3-form flux, R-R fluxes, D6-branes and O6-planes at large volume and small string coupling. With these ingredients, the first slow-roll parameter satisfies epsilon >= 27/13 whenever V > 0, ruling out both inflation (including brane/anti-brane inflation) and de Sitter vacua in this limit. Our proof is based on the dependence of the 4-dimensional potential on the volume and dilaton moduli in the presence of fluxes and branes. We also describe broader classes of IIA models which may include cosmologies with inflation and/or de Sitter vacua. The inclusion of extra ingredients, such as NS 5-branes and geometric or non-geometric NS-NS fluxes, evades the assumptions used in deriving the no-go theorem. We focus on NS 5-branes and outline how such ingredients may prove fruitful for cosmology, but we do not provide an explicit model. We contrast the results of our IIA analysis with the rather different situation in IIB.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bb5e1c5c4ef941c6135a306d1c8ca377ba7a4c09

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Citations in the corpus

De Sitter Space and the Swampland (2018, methodology): “For instance, [13] presented a general no-go theorem for dS vacua from Calabi-Yau compactifications with O6/D6 and general NS-NS and R-R fluxes.”
Bounds on slow roll and the de Sitter Swampland (2018, methodology): “, [12, 13], in attempting to constrain de Sitter/inflating models, eg.”
Trans-Planckian Censorship and the Swampland (2019, background): “It was shown in [25], that upon compactifying IIA with D6 and O6 planes on a Calabi-Yau threefold, in large volume and weak coupling regime, each one of the planes contributes an exponential term in dilaton and volume moduli to the scalar potential.”
Monodromy in the CMB: Gravity Waves and String Inflation (2008, result): “Recently a new class of de Sitter models in string theory was proposed in [4] in the context of ten-dimensional type IIA string theory compactified on Nil (or Sol) manifolds with orientifold 6-planes, fivebranes, and fluxes (complementing other work [ 17 ] showing that Calabi-Yau manifolds with a su”
De Sitter hunting in a classical landscape (2011, methodology): “Based on the scaling behavior of the scalar potential with respect to these two fields, the authors of [4] showed that type IIA flux compactification with RR- and H-flux and O6-planes cannot lead to dS vacua when the compact space is a CY3 manifold.”
A ten-dimensional action for non-geometric fluxes (2011, unknown): “This leads us to the following important result: the potential derived from our ten-dimensional considerations agrees with the four-dimensional arguments in [72], where the authors propose the dependencies33 Vω ∼ σ ρ , VH ∼ σ ρ , VQ ∼ σ ρ , VR ∼ σ ρ(3) .”
Les Houches Lectures on Constructing String Vacua (2008, background): “– There is a no-go theorem [39] excluding slow roll inflation without adding more ingredients than those considered in [23].”
What if string theory has no de Sitter vacua? (2018, background): “which cannot be obtained from the 10D action and turn out very useful in dS model building [36].”
The Swampland: Introduction and Review (2019, background): “An interesting such theorem applies to compactifications of type IIA on Calabi-Yau manifolds [465].”
Towards classical de Sitter solutions in string theory (2009, background): “For ease of making our statements precise, we thus focus on finding de Sitter solutions with only classical objects such as fluxes, orientifold planes, and curvature along the lines of [1,4,5,17,18], since their contributions to the 4D potential are explicitly computable.”
Searching for slow-roll moduli inflation in massive type IIA supergravity with metric fluxes (2008, methodology): “While the original work of HKTT [13] was based exclusively on the dependence of the potential on the dilaton and volume moduli field our work is based on the dependence of the potential on the dilaton, volume as well as the Kähler and complex structure moduli.”
β-supergravity: a ten-dimensional theory with non-geometric fluxes, and its geometric framework (2013, background): “The scalar potential has been argued [63] to be generically given, for the NSNS sector, by”
On inflation with non-minimal coupling (2010, background): “Similarly, this may spoil other attempts to embed inflation into particle physics models with multiple scalar fields [35], unless the underlying UV theory carries an appropriate structure.”
Lectures on the Swampland Program in String Compactifications (2021, methodology): “Consider F-theory compactified on an elliptically fibered CY3.”
Inflation and String Theory (2014, background): “However, in the best-understood classes of type IIA compactifications, there are no-go theorems for inflation [501, 502] (see also [503]).”
The effective theory of type IIA AdS4 compactifications on nilmanifolds and cosets (2008, background): “Extending the earlier work [13], the authors of [14] proved a no-go theorem against a period of slow-roll inflation in type IIA compactifications on Calabi–Yau manifolds with standard RR and NSNS-fluxes, D6-branes and O6-planes at large volume and with small string coupling.”
Non‐geometric fluxes in supergravity and double field theory (2012, unknown): “Indeed, it was argued in [76] that the most general potential (from the NSNS sector) should be given by V pρ, σq “ σ ` ρ V 0 H ` ρ ́1 V 0 f ` ρ V 0 Q ` ρ 3 V 0 R ̆ , (4.”